Cheyenne: Love you and miss you!
As I brushed my teeth at the kitchen sink, I smiled at the picture of Cheyenne with all of her friends. I saved the picture to my photo reel, hoping one day to print it out and put it up in the home we’d own together one of these days. I sighed as I spit my toothpaste out and washed out my mouth. I rinsed off my toothbrush and walked it back into my bathroom, where I stared longingly at my own bathroom sink.
“Why won’t you just work?” I groaned.
Every apartment always had that one issue. That one thing that never could quite get resolved. And my bathroom sink was that one thing. If it wasn’t clogged, then the pipes leaked. And if the pipes didn’t leak and it wasn’t clogged, then it was a hardware issue. Every other week, there was something wrong with this damned thing.
It alone made me want to move the first chance I got.
But this place had been home for the longest time. I was going on my fifth year in this apartment, and it was sentimental to me in a lot of ways. It was the first apartment I ever rented that didn’t require a co-signer with me. It was the first apartment I ever paid for out of pocket without any help. It was even the first apartment where Cheyenne and I had our own space. It was ours, and no one else’s.
It would be hard to part with this place when the time came.
“What in the world?” I murmured.
Off in the distance I heard a dull roar, but it quickly grew closer. I furrowed my brow as I quickly changed into my nightgown and pulled my silken robe across my body. I tied it off into a bow before I stepped out onto the smallest little balcony I’d ever seen in my life. But it was my balcony, and as I sat in my red plastic Adirondack chair, I listened to the rumbling noises of motorcycles creeping toward me.
Until they rounded the corner into the complex.
“What the fuck?” I asked.
I stood to my feet and leaned over the balcony, trying to crane my neck around the building. I didn’t have to crane too far, though. A couple of the guys parked in parking spaces and got off their bikes, but the rest sat there. Looking around, like they were looking for something specific.
Or someone.
“Summer!”
I almost had to do a double-take, because I know damned good and well I didn’t hear Tanner’s voice.
“Summer! I’m coming up!”
Even though I saw him waving at me before he rushed toward the wrought iron railing, it still didn’t register. It didn’t hit me that Tanner was actually here—actually standing in front of me and yelling my name—until he sprinted up to my balcony and reached his arms over.
And when I snapped out of it, I backed away. “What the fuck are you doing?”
His eyes whipped up to mine. “We have to go. Now.”
I took another step back. “Oh, no you don’t. How did you figure out where I lived? What the hell are you doing here with your crew or whatever?”
He sighed. “We really don’t have time.”
“Well, I’m not leaving until you talk to me. So, there’s that.”
“You’re in danger, Summer. Serious danger. And you have to come with me.”
I backed myself into the open doorway. “Nice to see some things never change.”
His stare grew softer. “Summer, we can talk about that when we—”
I held up my hand. “Let me get one thing straight: I’m never talking about high school with you. Ever. Because for all the good that you are, the one thing you struggle with is talking. Communicating. Informing people that love you of things they should know.”
He hopped over the railing while his friends slowly rode around the complex. “Look, I know this isn’t ideal, and I know you hate me—”
I snickered. “I don’t hate you, Tanner. I never hated you.”
He held out his hand for me. “Then, come with me. Let me at least protect you from the storm you don’t even see coming.”
As my gaze fell to the palm of his hand, I saw rugged calluses that boasted of the life he had lived since then. I wanted to run some lotion over them. I wanted to massage his hands like I used to always do whenever they got too sore during note-taking in classes.
But all I felt was anger. “You haven’t changed one bit, have you?”
His hand twitched. “Come again?”
My eyes slowly slid up to meet his. “You haven’t changed at all. You’re still the pompous, arrogant football star with a God complex, aren’t you?”
“Whatever you think I did, it was always to keep you safe, Summer. Always.”
I smacked his hand away. “I don’t need you protecting me, Tanner!”
My voice echoed off the corners of the balcony before I took a step back, heading inside.
“I can take care of myself. I took care of myself, damn it! All I needed was for you to treat me the way I deserved to be treated. And instead, you locked me out and used protection as an excuse in order to do so.”
His jaw clenched. “We can argue somewhere where you’re safe. But right now—”
I pointed at him. “No, I’ve had six months of silence. Six months since I saw you in the strip club, and I’m only just now seeing you again? After you knew I was in town, and worked in the area, and I’m only seeing you now when you feel there’s something to protect me from? Are you kidding me right now?”
He lowered his voice. “Summer, please. I’ll beg you if necessary.”
I threw my hands into the air. “I don’t want you to beg, you fucking idiot! I want you to flap those lips and talk to me!”
His face grew hard. “I wasn’t expecting to find you at a strip club, Summer. I wasn’t expecting you to ever cross my path again, much less in a place like that. And then to go and find out—”
My eyes widened because I knew exactly what he was about to say. “You’ve been tracking me, haven’t you?”
He shook his head. “No, but you are being tracked, and that’s why you have to come with me. You aren’t safe by yourself, no matter how much you think you are.”
I folded my arms over my chest and murmured to myself. “Showing up on my doorstep after six fucking months. No-talkin-half-assin-thick-headed-as-fuck, pompous litttle windbag.”
He chuckled. “You know I can hear you, right?”
I spat the word at him. “Good.”
Then, his hand finally lowered itself. “I had no idea what to say to you at that club. Especially after seeing you in those skimpy little outfits. I was so worried, and yet I hadn’t seen you in so long, and there were so many things raging through my system and it just… didn’t see it fair to you to approach you until I was ready. Until I had sorted through things.”
“And that took six months?”
Someone whistled piercingly off in the distance. “Wrap it up, Tanner!”
I nodded. “Who the fuck’s that?”
He sighed. “The crew’s president, Brooks.”
“Ah.”
He took a small step toward me. “I’m not expecting you to forgive me, and I’m not expecting some sort of heated reunion.”
“At least, not the heated reunion you’d want.”
He winked at me, but I didn’t budge. However, when his eyes gravitated over my shoulder I turned around.
And gasped when I saw the picture of me and Cheyenne hanging up for him to see.
“What I would like to know, though, is if you ever had any plans to introduce me to our daughter,” he murmured.
I slowly turned back around to face him. “How do you know that’s your daughter?”
Then, he closed the distance between the two of us and cupped my cheeks. “The answer to that question is the reason why you have to come with me. There are bad people out there that we’ve been fighting for a very long time that know who you two are to me. That’s how I found out about it. About you and her. And I know that’s going to piss you off, but right now you need to be pissed and on the back of someone’s bike instead of happy and alone. Got it?”
And as I gazed into the beautiful green eyes he had given to our daughter, I saw the sincerity behind them.
Laced with panic.
“Give me ten minutes to pack some things up, okay?” I asked.
Tanner waved his hand above his head before he nodded. “Lead the way, then. I’ll help.”
And I prayed to myself that whatever force he was talking about hadn’t found Cheyenne at her best friend’s yet.
